[HiTech RedNeck]

Is there anything even heroic that could be done... like shipping trainloads of snow down from the north next winter?

[fifedom]

Is there anything even heroic that could be done... like shipping trainloads of snow down from the north next winter?

---

Most people do not realize how cheap water is and how much it weighs. I saw in another article that Los Angeles is paying $700 per acre foot for water from farmers. I looked it up and one acre foot is about 1000 cubic meters. I cubic meter is 1000 liters and one liter of water has a mass of 1 kilogram so one acre foot weighs around 1000 tons. No way you are going to ship 1000 tons of water a long distance on a train for $700. BTW to compare, a battleship weighs around 50,000 tons or as much as 50 acre feet of water. Even with the drought some farmers are getting about 1 acre-foot of water per acre per year. So a 50 acre plot of land gets water with weight equal to a battleship.

[blam]

"Is there anything even heroic that could be done... like shipping trainloads of snow down from the north next winter?"

Not such a far-fetched idea.

In 1851, Dr Gorrie , a doctor in Northwest Florida, was hosting a dinner party that included the French Ambassador and was deluded with questions when he explained that he had made the ice that was in their drinks.
Everyone was truly baffled because the arrival of the 'ice ships' in Southern ports in the heat of summer was a big event...everyone knew when the 'ice ship' came. The 'ice ship' hadn't been in port at all.

Doctor Gorrie had invented refrigeration.

"Dr. Gorrie became convinced that cold was the healer. He noted that "Nature would terminate the fevers by changing the seasons." Ice, cut in the winter in northern lakes, stored in underground ice houses, and shipped, packed in sawdust, around the Florida Keys by sailing vessel, in mid-summer could be purchased dockside on the Gulf Coast. In 1844, he began to write a series of articles in Apalachicola's "Commercial Advertiser" newspaper, entitled, "On the prevention of Malarial Diseases". "

I didn't know about the ice ships until I read about Dr Gorrie.